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Boiled Fish and Sauce

A boiled fish served with a sauce of beaten egg yolks, egg white, lemon, parsley, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Fish and Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fish

  1. Boil the cut of cod or haddock until cooked through.

  2. Lift the fish onto a hot serving dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks well and add salt, pepper, nutmeg, boiling cooking liquid, lemon juice, and chopped parsley.

  2. Gently fold in the beaten egg white until combined.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce over the fish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Egg white
Adds volume and a light, airy texture when folded into the sauce.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich egg sauce.
Cod or haddock
Provides the main protein and mild flavor that the sauce complements.

The step that matters

Adding the cooking liquid to the yolks. Adding hot liquid to yolks too quickly can scramble them. Whisking well and adding the liquid gradually keeps the sauce smooth and thickened.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, lemon, egg, pepper, fish, parsley):

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, lemon, egg, pepper, fish, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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